This afternoon, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell got his hands on excerpts of the remarks that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was preparing to give this evening. Bound and determined to find racism where it doesn't exist, O'Donnell did not disappoint. Taking to the air on Martin Bashir's eponymous program, O'Donnell laid out his case that McConnell's crack that the president "has been working hard to earn a spot on the PGA tour."
That's just plain racist, even if by two or three degrees of separation, O'Donnell explained. The long and short of it: When you think Obama at the PGA, you think of Tiger Woods, and when you think of Tiger Woods, you think about his cheating on his wife. [You can watch the Breitbart video embedded below page break.]
So somehow, and O'Donnell didn't bother to explain his reasoning, philandering is supposed to be a racial thing, even though any sane person playing a word association game that links president with adultery would conjure up white Democratic President Bill Clinton.
At any rate, O'Donnell insisted, McConnell and his senior speechwriters were reaching for a "racial double entendre" that conveys a dog-whistle message to the audience.
Although initially skeptical, Bashir was ultimately convinced. "Wow, things are getting lower and lower by the day," he lamented.
UPDATE: Oddly enough, O'Donnell himself used arguably racially-tinged language by saying at the end of the segment that McConnell "slavishly" acceeded to the demands of speechwriters who were under orders from Romney operatives running every aspect of the convention.
